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While Western Europe’s 17th century was disfigured by both religious wars and wars of territorial ambition, Holland a land reclaimed from the sea, nonetheless prospered. When she extricated itself from Spanish control to become Europe’s first republic, the stage was set for a breathtaking trajectory. As Holland became fabulously wealthy from trade, shipping, insurance and banking,
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For the comfortable middle class of the western world, politics is usually conscripted for a verbal tournament. It’s rarely a matter of life or death, more a jousting tool over dinner parties or a dance of metaphorical sabre thrusts around the garden barbecue. For 24-year-old Édouard Louis, the most compelling novelist to emerge from the
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The ancient Greeks had a word for nature in its idealised form: Arcadia. It embodied the idea of rustic perfection and relative isolation — natural beauty unspoilt by the depredations of man — an idea which has pre-occupied poets and painters ever since. But nature is not our friend. Her aim is to return us to the
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A fizzing time-capsule has landed on our shores courtesy of our northern hemisphere cousins, the Scots. Director Michael Brand’s negotiations with the directors of the Scottish National Gallery, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art have presented the Art Gallery of NSW with the most dazzling exhibition since the
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The groundswell of interest world-wide in artefacts from our prehistoric past, reveals our shared humanity at a time when no written records exist to bear testimony to it. Indeed, 99% of our history is prehistoric, which leaves a lot of mankind’s developing apprehension of the world and the skills acquired to negotiate it, completely unmapped
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In Spring the pulse quickens and the sap rises, regardless of whether you’re a fieldmouse, an almond tree or an art dealer. Australia’s now well-established tradition of large art fairs where dealers and potential buyers come together under a single roof is mutating.
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What does it say about the Archibald Prize when one of the most arresting portraits is hanging in the Wynne Prize? In fact, not hanging but resting on a plinth. Robert Hague’s marble sculpture Shutdown (pictured above) is pregnant with contemporary relevance, rich in historical associations and its remarkable technical virtuosity is not an end in
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Cast your eye around these rooms reader, and ask yourself “Why would the Art Gallery of NSW need $400 million dollars worth of new space?”.
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The gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt were busier than our modern lot — less bloodthirsty too. History has shown us that gods mutate according to human desires. For the Egyptians, ensuring the fertility of crops was a necessity which the Nile River assisted by the gods, attended to. But making it through to the next world — the afterlife — was an even more pressing matter. Ensuring a safe passage to
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On April 21 Sotheby’s New York auctioned an internally flawless, D colour, 100.20 carat emerald-cut diamond (pictured above). It sold for $US22 million. The seller was anonymous, so was the buyer. Welcome to the exclusive, highly secretive, and occasionally murky world of the diamond whose mystique has been endlessly explored. The miseries it can inflict have
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